Author: PeteBrown

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Theme Park Britain is missing a vital ingredient

I find myself in Stratford-upon-Avon, covering the European Brewing Convention’s Environmental Sustainability Symposium for the Brewers’ Guardian. I’ll spare you the details of the controversy surrounding the re-use of spent grains, and the latest revelations on the optimisation of CIP-cleaning of open machine surfaces by surface modification, but being in one of Britain’s tourist meccas really has brought home a point we discussed often in our steering committee meetings on the Intelligent Choice Report over the summer.

People come around the world to Stratford to mainline Shakespeare. It’s everywhere you look: his birthplace, the theatres, the Othello Bar and Restaurant – I was half-expecting the Indian restaurant in town to be branded King Lear’s Curry House (motto: ‘blow winds and crack your cheeks’). Like any theme park anywhere, Stratford is a mix of faux-ancient and depressingly modern. Almost every building is mock-Tudor, which would be fine, but the effect is undermined somewhat when every single shop front is a national or global chain: Pizza Hut, WHSmiths, Costa Coffee, Pizza Express – all with steep gabled roofs, black beams and white walls. It’s a dispiriting place.

But the thing is, people come here for more than the works of Bill himself: as far as I know he never wrote ‘authentic-looking wattle and daub or ordinary red brick work? That is the question’. Stratford is a hopeful homage not just to Shakespeare but to his time, a chance to step into a plastic history, and for many tourists, it works.

So you’re a hotel that caters mainly to American tourists seeking a sanitised verison of sixteenth century England. You’ve got the exterior looking like it did in Bill’s day. You’ve got the prints of characters from the main plays adorning your walls inside. You’ve probably got badly-punned dishes on the menu named as tributes to the same characters. All this goes down brilliantly with Hiram and Blanche from Des Moines. But they’ve come all this way to sample a taste of Ye Olde England, and here they are in the centre of it, and what do you offer them to drink? That’s right: Stella, Becks or Budweiser.

This is what we noted in the Intelligent Choice Report: cask ale is outperforming every other ale or lager. Cask Marque’s real ale trail regional guides are stocked by tourist offices nationwide, and they can’t re-stock them fast enough. Surveys among tourists show that ‘traditional British beer’ is near the top of the list of things they want to try when they visit the country. And hotels in general steadfastly refuse to stock it. WHY? I’ve never been one to bleat on about how we should treat cask ale almost as a charity case – we should drink it because, well, because we should, because it’s traditional, all that stuff – but I’m all for anything that gives me a better choice of beers when I’m out and about – I’m selfish like that. And this is simply a case of commercial opportunity. My hotel has a shit beer selection. If it stocked a decent range of well-kept cask ales I’m sure it could easily sell them at four quid a pint if they wanted to.

It’s not just Stratford – touristy pubs in London almost have to be tortured by water-boarding before they will admit to stocking cask ale alongside the usual global lager brands.

People travel to foreign countries because they want to see, hear, taste something different. Britain’s cask ale culture is unique in the world, and when you ask tourists, they think it’s pretty cool. But we act like we’re ashamed of it, like we don’t want to know.

I know it’s not very British to be proud of something we do really well, but could we please at least make available something tourists come here looking for and are prepared to pay good money for?

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Pissing in the streets

I went to a Westminster Forum conference on binge drinking yesterday. It was worth shelling out for to hear the latest thinking on why drinking is evil, and to be fair, there was a rough consensus reached on the role of the community pub being beneficial and beer – particularly cask ale – not being the main problem.

One of the best presentations was from a police inspector who had looked at the problems with drink-related anti-social behaviour in north London and reduced them by looking at the causes rather than just trying to treat the symptoms. So for example they have officers patrolling a car park with Blackberries trying to sort out minicabs for people rather than just waiting for them to get into a fight in a cab queue and then arresting them.

But one of the main problems is, apparently, trespass – people going into gardens and pissing on the flowerbeds, the lawns, even the doorways.

Sure, this is revolting. But no-one actually presented an alternative solution.

Hands up – every now and then, maybe once every couple of months, I take a leak in some dark street corner on the way home. I’m not proud of it. I’m faintly disgusted by it. But here’s the thing: the British Public Toilets Association (yes, there really is such a thing) reckons 45% of public conveniences have closed in the last couple of decades. They occupy prime real estate – one former public toilet was recently sold for £125,000 as a flat. A parliamentary enquiry just this week estimated that the number of public conveniences in the UK has fallen from 5,410 in 2000 to 4,423 this year.

And then you’ve got the pubs themselves: almost every pub I visit these days has big notices on the door: ‘toilets are for the use of customers only’. Why? What possible harm could it do to allow someone to pop in and take a quick leak? Some pubs near me have even installed security locks on the toilet doors, so you have to go to the bar, shame-faced, and ask for the code before you’re allowed to use the facilities. This mean-spirited approach shames the essence of the pub.

So put yourself in the shoes of the average Friday night drinker: you’ve had a few pints. You’ve been ejected from the closing pub into the cool evening air. You’ve got to that point in the evening where you need a piss about once every half hour. If you’re very lucky and the night bus comes or you happen to drop on a taxi, you could be home in an hour. There are no public toilets, and you’re not allowed to use those in any of the few pubs or bars that remain open.

What, precisely, is the alternative to urinating in some conveniently dark corner or behind someone’s hedge?

If anyone has any suggestions, please contribute: I’d offer a prize for the best one, but you know, credit crunch and that…

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Beer Exposed – a little after the event

Lots of these posts should have been up here a few weeks ago – anyway…

I posted (late) that I was doing Beer Exposed, a new event in London that took place during the last weekend in September.

I was interested when the organisers approached me because after my first visit to the Great American Beer Festival in 2005, I got very jealous of what they had and felt that it was infinitely superior to the Great British Beer Festival – why did beer festivals have to be restricted to real ale? If you allowed big brewers in didn’t that give more money to make the whole event a little more polished? Wasn’t it a good idea to have small tasting glasses so people could sample more beers? And would it be possible to pay an entry fee and then let people just try the beer without having to pay any more?

My outspoken piece in the trade press led to a very entertaining war of words and quite public feud with Roger Protz, who saw himself as CAMRA’s appointed guard dog. This feud ended when I wrote a piece on the Great Yorkshire Beer and Food Show a year later, during which I realised there was room for more than one kind of beer festival: let CAMRA preach to the converted, there was clearly a market for it, and there was room for a different kind of beer festival alongside the GBBF rather than us always putting pressure in CAMRA to wake up and smell the 21st century.

Well, Beer Exposed turned out to be almost exactly the kind of event I was imagining. It was a big risk, run as it was for the first time by a couple of guys who were not known to the beer industry. Many of the big names in brewing stayed away. The numbers of attendees were not as high as the organisers had hoped and they almost certainly lost money. But this was year one, and the feedback from those who attended suggests next year can only be bigger and better.
There were real ale brewers, extreme beers, US beers and lagers from all across the world. Stalls were staffed by the brewers themselves rather than CAMRA volunters. Without the need to take cash, the brewers were free to talk to drinkers about their beers, and many brewers I spoke to said this was the highlight of the event – being able to meet the punter and discuss the beers they love creating.
The people who attended the festival were, in the main, not beer afficionados but people who were curious about beer, knew very little and wanted to learn more – about a 50-50 split between men and women. The walks I did around the floor were well-attended by people who wanted to learn about different varieties of hops! It was proof that there is a big audience out there who want to embrace more interesting beer – and are prepared to pay £17 entrance fee to do so.
With the addition of slops bins, glass washing stations and a bit more food, this could be the perfect beer festival.

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Beer at All Bar One

Another thing that was keeping me busy over the last couple of months is that I was helping All Bar One launch their new beer range. Each October they do a special push on beers and are trying to create a genuinely exciting collection of beers from around the world, not just the usual selection of overpriced lagers with obscure provenance and interchangeable product delivery.

This year, like last year, I wrote the blurb and tasting notes which is currently sitting in a very attractive booklet on every table in each of All Bar One’s 37 outlets.

OK so it was paid work and I’m bound to be positive, and while ‘the world’s best beers’ might be a bit of an overclaim, they’re doing some really interesting stuff – far more interesting than you’d expect from a chain like this. The highlight this year is the world exclusive launch of Duvel Green on draught. It’s 6.5%, and while it’s still definitely Duvel, it’s a little lighter, a bit more quaffable. Other beers include a keg version of Adnam’s East Green, which is jolly nice, Kasteel Cru Rose (not my cup of tea, but lots of people like it), Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Budvar Dark, Worthington White Shield and Meantime Chocolate. You can find out more about the full range with my tasting notes here: http://www.all-bar-one.co.uk/classics/index.htm
The new food menu is also genuinely excellent, and we did a bit of food matching in the back of the booklet. One that didn’t make the cut is Guinness with their melted chocolotae pudding. Truly awesome, and I guess Meantime Chocolate would go even better.
It’s well worth getting down there – several big chains are starting to look more closely at their beer ranges, and while they’re never going to break new ground for the hardened beer aficionado, it’s got to be a good thing worth encouraging.

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Can you afford to ignore cask ale? (That’s a rhetorical question by the way)

The other big thing apart from the book is the Intelligent Choice report, which was launched last night in the stunning Counting House, a Fuller’s pub and former bank (maybe we’ll be seeing a lot more of those!)

The report is the brainchild of the Why Handpull group, formed of the main regional brewers, in association with the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), CAMRA and Cask Marque, the body that promotes cask ale quality in pubs. They commissioned me to write the first one last year and, happily, asked me to do it again this year.

I’ve slagged CAMRA in the past and I used to advertise lager, so I have no particular political axe to grind about cask ale – I think that’s one of the reasons they chose me to write it. I hate it when people can’t decide whether a beer is any good or not until they know whether it’s cask conditioned. So while the report is positive, it’s objective. I’m not saying everybody should drink cask ale because I want them to, I’m saying pubs should stock it mainly because it is a proven driver of profit and footfall at a time when pubs need all the help they can get.

This year’s report shows that, far from the terminal decline many mistakenly believe cask ale to be in, it’s actually performing better than any other ale or lager category. It’s still in volume decline but only just, whereas premium lager is shedding volume faster than Fern Britton in a gastric band.

This couldn’t be happening if cask ale was only drunk by old blokes and beardy wierdies. Those people do exist (though every time I see an old man on his own in a pub these days, he’s drinking Carlsberg or Carling), but most cask drinkers are affluent, upmarket, discerning individuals in their forties and fifties. What’s really interesting is a growign number of occasional drinkers are in their late twenties and early thirties – younger on average than beer drinkers generally.

But 65% of the UK population have never tried cask ale, Britain’s national drink. That’s nonsense – imagine if 65% of French people had never tasted wine. And the remarkable thing is that when people do try it, 40% if them start drinking it regularly. There’s huge potential for growth here.

The report website went live yesterday and is at http://www.caskalereport.com/. You can see a summary of key findings on the site and you cand download PDFs of last year’s and this year’s report. I’m available for interviews and comment if you’re a journalist and you’re interested in covering it. If you’re a journalist and you’re not interested in covering it, why the hell not?

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Unemployed lapsed blogger in that ‘end of A levels’ mood

Hello,

You may have noticed that the blog has been quiet for a while. Well, I’ve been busy, and this week, the fruits of my labours can be revealed to the three of you who are interested.

The main thing from my point of view is that I finally finished the IPA book! Eight months later than planned, and 60,000 words too long, we’ve got a fair bit of editing to do, but then that’s why I have an editor. Publication has now been delayed till July 09, but I’m hoping the final result will be well worth the wait. A year ago today I was posting that my first barrel had exploded in Tenerife, and was setting sail from the Canaries to Brazil. I can’t believe where the year has gone, save that I spent most of it wandering through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, lost in archives, old newspapers, and the cheerfully racist reminiscences of those who spent time in India under the East India Company and the Raj.

At the same time as finishing the book several other projects came to fruition. When I talk about them they’ll be above this post, so I want to say read on, but if I’ve posted them yet, you probably already have. If you see what I mean.

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Come and join us at Beer Exposed!

This weekend sees a different kind of beer event at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

Beer Exposed is based on the American beer festival model – you pay a high initial entry fee, then inside you’re given a sample glass and get free samples of as much beer as you want. It’s a great way of doing things – you really get to try a great many different beers and it makes for a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

Today I’m giving tutored tastings and guided walks around the venue. If you’re in London and at a loose end, do come along. It’s a fantastic event – exactly what the British beer scene needs.

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What it’s really all about

I had a moment the other night that made me realise the single thing I love the most about this whole beer lark.

I was out with a journalist from Time Out Mumbai who had written a feature on my IPA voyage, (it’s credited to me, but it was one of those ‘as told to’ jobs) and is now in London for a couple of weeks, and asked me to show him around a few pubs. He knew his beer and his been in London before, as his ability to teach me the rule sof bar billiards (a shameful gap in my knowledge) testified.

We confirmed together that the Dog and Duck in Soho serves the best-kept point of Timothy Taylor Landlord to be found in the south of England. Then we moved on to a Sam Smith’s pub. He deferred to me on the ordering.

“Do you like Guinness?” I asked.

He nodded.

“OK, let’s try a bottle of Oatmeal Stout.”

The look on his face was one I see often in this situation. It’s the look of having nailed it. His eyes bulged, his knees bent slightly, his mouth puckered, then stretched into a massive grin. “My god,” he said, “That is amazing! I’m never going to drink anything else ever again!”

That this was Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout isn’t really the point. It’s a great beer, but I’ve also had this same reaction to Goose Island IPA, Brooklyn Lager, Orkney’s Dark Island Reserve, and Franziskaner Weissbier. Maybe you think none of these are the absolute immortals of the beer world, but they’re all beers that, to someone who doesn’t know craft beer, completely change their very perception of what beer can be. Their palate becomes recalibrated, the doors of perception are opened. And to be the person who gets to facilitate that, who gets to introduce someone to the sheer sensory pleasure of a great beer for the first time, is both a privilege and a great high all of its own.

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The delicate relationship between beer and fashion

The nice people at Use Small Words e-mailed me and asked me if I’d mention thier website, where they make t-shirts and beer glasses featuring famous drinking quotes. I checked out the website and the designs are pretty cool – far better than the ones you get where someone just strips the words across the front – so I’m more than happy to oblige. They’re US-based, so not sure about international shipping etc, but if you want to make that summer fashion statement on the beach, go check ’em out.

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